Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method for the image forming apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus receives a plurality of PDL (page description language) jobs which are print jobs. When the received plurality of PDL jobs are successively stored in a memory which the image forming apparatus has, the free space of the memory may be exhausted to cause shortage of memory for executing the PDL jobs, and therefore, the PDL jobs may not be executed.
To cope with this, there are known image forming apparatuses which, upon receiving a PDL job, restrict reception of other PDL jobs so as to allocate memory for executing the received PDL job (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. H10-264455).
Printing methods for use when an image forming apparatus prints a plurality of copies of print data corresponding to a PDL job include group printing in which a plurality of copies of print data are printed on a page-by-page basis, and sort printing in which a plurality of copies of print data are printed on a copy-by-copy basis. To perform printing of print data by group printing, the image forming apparatus stores print data on one page to be printed in a memory and performs printing of the print data stored in the memory. It is thus unnecessary to store print data on all pages to be printed in the memory at a time, and therefore, enough space of the memory which the image forming apparatus has is easily secured.
On the other hand, to perform printing of print data by sort printing, the image forming apparatus stores print data on all pages to be printed in the memory at a time. Therefore, when print data is printed by sort printing, a shortage of the free space of the memory which the image forming apparatus has tends to occur, and a PDL job may not be executed.
However, the image forming apparatus described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. H10-264455 restricts reception of other PDL jobs irrespective of which printing method is used. Namely, the image forming apparatus described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. H10-264455 excessively restricts reception of other PDL jobs and thus does not efficiently execute print jobs.